The Elegant Variation

DOUBLE DOG DARED

My Hungarian friend Gabor Kalman, whom I reference blind in my introduction to my körözött recipe at Maud Newton (his was the insistence on feta), writes in suggesting that my grade school travails might have been avoided:

"Well, the truth is that the no.1 ingredient of any real körözött is Liptauer (liptoi turo) and because it was not available in America in the late fifties during the Hungarian invasion, most people went about to find substitutes, or a way to create something similar without it. I am sure that is the reason your classmates thought it tasted like wild ape shit. I found that certain sheep milk feta particularly the Romanian brinza comes quite close to Liptauer. I'll try it on you if you are courageous enough to visit us now, and if you still find it disgusting, I'll never tell you what I am reading nowdays!"

TEV GIVEAWAY: DARKNESS AT NOON

"How can you not have Darkness at Noon?" MOTEV exclaimed not too long ago, her horror not quite as mock as we'd have liked.  "I vill send it to you," she announced.  Now, when MOTEV makes a statement like that, she always follows through but the timelines can become expansive and we're all about the instant gratification here.  Thus, once again, we find ourselves with two copies, and so we're keeping the MOTEV copy (what else can a son do?) and offering up the other one here today.

For those unfamiliar with Arthur Koestler's masterwork, here's what the recently lamented Christopher Hitchens had to say about it back in 2005:

From the first page of Darkness at Noon you become aware that the daily realization of impending execution is a powerful stimulus, both to reflection and to fatalism. Koestler's chief character, Nicholas Rubashov, is modeled on those former Bolshevik intellectuals who made full "confessions" of fantastic and abominable crimes at the Moscow show trials of the late 1930s. And, because Koestler had by no means forgotten what he had learned about the dialectic, he decided to place Rubashov in a dilemma from which he himself had escaped. What if the opponent of Stalin is still half-convinced that Stalin is morally wrong but may be "historically" right? He may decide to put his name on the confession and hope that history will one day vindicate him. His last duty to the Party may, in other words, be suicide.

OK, not exactly cheery holiday fare, but one of the major books of the last century, hence MOTEV's horrified exclamation.  No confessions necessary to win this copy, just an email, subject line "GIMME DARKNESS", received no later than 6 p.m. PST.  Include your full mailing address or else, previous winners ineligible.  We'll see who the Random Number Generator selects today.  Until then, mes amis, adieu.

UPDATE: Congratulations to our winner, Andrew Seger of Ashland, OR.

THURSDAY MARGINALIA

* TLS Editor Will Eaves is taking readers on a guided tour of that holiday perennial, A Christmas Carol.

The rapidity of construction shows in the story’s gappy psychology (why, one might ask, does Scrooge become a miser?), but it also permits a number of strokes of genius, which, aptly for a haunting, seem to loom quickly and then vanish with a laugh. One or two of these are just metaphorical phosphorescences, such as the “dismal light” of the knocker that has become Jacob Marley’s face, shining “like a bad lobster in a dark cellar”. But others seem to me to be good examples of a writer’s highly refined process of selection and discard working at an unconscious level.

* The singer Lily Allen has been named an Orange Broadband Prize judge.

* Vintage has chosen a designer to redesign its Thomas Pynchon line.

* The British Library has forked over £1.1m to keep Harold Pinter's papers in the UK.

Given Pinter's strongly expressed views on American foreign policy and other aspects of the US - Hollywood is a "shithouse", he told Time Out magazine last month - it would have been a shock if his archive had followed his compatriots' across the Atlantic. The archive is a treasure trove. Among the piles of letters is one from Noel Coward, who professes himself a fan. "You cheerfully break every rule of the theatre that I have been brought up to believe in except the cardinal one of never boring for a split second," he writes.

* J.M. Coetzee reviewed in Slate.

Diary of a Bad Year is also a novel about care, though each of its three streams considers the matter from quite different points of view. In the top stream—a series of sharp, short, curmudgeonly essays delivered, apparently, by Coetzee himself, or else by a fictional character who parallels Coetzee in nearly every important biographical detail, including the names of his novels—Coetzee runs variations on the theme of carelessness. The topics range from politics to the humanities to science, from the intrinsic violence of the state to the problems of the contemporary university to probability theory, but in essay after essay the gravamen remains the same. The author indicts the heedlessness inculcated in us by modern ideas, technologies, economics, life. In each domain he mourns our inability to respond to the plight of single beings, or to immerse ourselves in the idiosyncrasies that would allow us to care about them as we should.

* And, finally, do check out Laila Lalami's ongoing book group discussion at Words Without Borders.

A HOLIDAY RECIPE

As most of you know, Maud Newton has been marking the holiday season by running a collection writer's recipes.  I was honored when she asked me to contribute one, and so I sent along the family recipe for körözött, a Hungarian staple of my childhood which resulted in all sorts of teasing at school:

It’s also, frankly, a somewhat unappetizing looking little hors d’oeuvre — the paprika gives it a bright orange color and the cream cheese gives it a mushy consistency — and so it brought me no end of grief as a child when it found its way into my lunch sandwiches. My fellow fifth graders were predictably grossed out at the sight of it, and one anointed it “Wild Ape Shit,” which saddled me with an unpleasant mental image that has lingered ever since.

Well, if that doesn't put you entirely off your lunch, you can find the rest of the story and the recipe here.

BLOGGER BOOKS

The Literary Saloon alerts us to Kara Warner's piece at amNew York on a subject near and dear to our hearts - bloggers and book deals.

"I don't think it's that they're bloggers that makes them attractive." says Chuck Shelton, an editor for Kirkus Reviews and The Book Standard. "They're visible to agents and publishers, therefore their online popularity is easy to gauge, the quality of their writing is evident, and checking them out is easier than slogging through the slush pile."

The problem, publishers are starting to realize, is that online popularity doesn't translate into sales. A blogger's cult following or built-in audience doesn't sell books, according to Shelton. "At least not in numbers publishers are interested in."

Warner actually goes on to mention Harry, Revised, though not by name.

Shelton agrees. There are a handful of bloggers, like Elizabeth Spiers and Mark Sarvas, who have used their blogger visibility to land major book deals, says Shelton. But even they are relatively unknown beyond the limits of blogworld.

"Their particular novels (which don't come out until 2008) are said by the few who have seen them to be A-list quality fiction, possibly major publishing events. Does their sales potential have anything to do with the authors' blogger status? No."

MAINTAINING RADIO SILENCE

We've an unexpectedly busy day today, with a new deadline dropped on us as well as a slew of meetings, so updates will be late or not at all, but will resume by tomorrow.  Thank you for your indulgence.

Until then, check out Maud Newton on the soundtrack approach to novel writing.  (We work similarly, favoring particular albums at different stretches of time.)

STANFORD'S TEN-SECOND BOHEME

We're off to the opera this evening, taking Mrs. TEV to see La Boheme as part of her "birthday package," and we think this must be the most to-the-point synopsis of this great opera we've ever seen:

Act I: Lucia, a consumptive seamstress called Mimi, comes upstairs to get a light from the poet Rodolfo. They fall in love.

Act II: Everyone except Alcindoro has a good time at the Café Momus on Christmas Eve.

Act III: Mimi and Rodolfo don't separate.

Act IV: Mimi dies.

PARIS REVIEW AUCTION

A number of interesting items are being auctioned off this week to assist The Paris Review.  Choice items include a private tour of The Paris Review archive at the Morgan Library, and tickets to The Colbert Report - post-strike, presumably.

"A HUNGER FOR BOOKS"

The Guardian has reproduced Doris Lessing's Nobel Prize acceptance speech in its entirety.

I have been looking at the speeches by some of the recent Nobel prizewinners. Take last year's winner, the magnificent Orhan Pamuk. He said his father had 500 books. His talent did not come out of the air, he was connected with the great tradition. Take VS Naipaul. He mentions that the Indian Vedas were close behind the memory of his family. His father encouraged him to write, and when he got to England he would visit the British Library. So he was close to the great tradition. Let us take John Coetzee. He was not only close to the great tradition, he was the tradition: he taught literature in Cape Town. And how sorry I am that I was never in one of his classes; taught by that wonderfully brave, bold mind. In order to write, in order to make literature, there must be a close connection with libraries, books, the tradition.

"LIKE LINCOLN, I WAS A LOUSY IMMIGRANT"

We've got Bellow on the brain these days, finally turning our attention to the miraculous Herzog.  A bit of random internet trawling brought us to this page from The Manhattan Rare Book Company, which lists this two-page typed letter from Bellow to his lawyer and friend (how is that possible?) Samuel Goldberg.  As we've mentioned in these pages before, our appetite for literary correspondence is bottomless.

Here's what Bellow has to say, for those who can't read the tiny print:

"Cher Samuel:

I have a brief pause in my occupations, having recently completed and sent off my long story or novelette, Sieze (sic) the Day, to Viking.  It'll appear with several other pieces in the Fall, and let's hope it will bring some revenue.  The hope is rather flimsy.  Stories, even mine, can't expect much of a sale.  The Guggenheim is coming to an end, and I had a disappointing bust up with Holiday.  The editors told me first to write the Illinois piece in my own way and then were appalled by my long discussion of boredom in the Midwest.  They wanted me to cheer things up a little, like a true native-son.  But I couldn't do that.  Like Lincoln, I was a lousy immigrant.

Without my Pa's small legacy, in other words, I could never make do.  But I've had a valuable illumination about money, thanks to Sieze (sic) the Day.  I've learned the true value of a dollar.  It's about two cents, on my scale.  We need money on account of our vices.  But after all vice isn't everything.  There are also cheaper vices, and I am remodelling Walden mentally for modern habitation.  I'll explain this to you in person some time in June when we return.

I've never seen Sondra so well.  You wouldn't know her.  I can't congratulate myself often enough.

Do you still wander round the bookstores?  If you should see a copy of R.F. Burton's Mission to Gelele, King of Dahomey, please capture it for me and send it out.  I'm in the midst of a long novella about an explorer and I need it for some details.  God will bless you for sending it air-express.  I will pay all charges.  It's more important to me than the next election.

Love, Saul."

"Sondra" is Sondra Tschacbasov, Bellow's second wife, whose affair with Jack Ludwig would serve as the inspiration for key characters in Herzog.  Finishing Seize the Day - which means the explorer novella is Henderson the Rain King - sets the letter at 1956 or thereabouts, so the election in question would have been the Eisenhower/Stevenson rematch.  Herzog would have been eight years away, his Nobel Prize twelve more beyond that.  It's fascinating and sobering, of course, to see him worrying about sales and finances, fully unaware of the glories lying in wait.  The writer's lot does seem utterly consistent, irrespective of when or where.

But it's a joy - especially in this age of hurried emails and text messages - to find turns of phrase like "We need money on account of our vices," and " Like Lincoln, I was a lousy immigrant" in a piece of casual correspondence.  But - as even the first chapter of Herzog seems to attest - Bellow couldn't write dully if he wanted to.  More Herzog thoughts to come.

By the way, the letter is yours for a cool $1900.  The perfect holiday gift for that special Person of Letters in your life.